New Cinema Paradiso station demolished

The small station at Lascari-Gratteri (province of Palermo), dating back to 1887 and known to film lovers as the scene of one of the main scenes (as well as one of the most moving) in Giuseppe Tornatore’s film Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, has been demolished. The station, in the film (winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and the Grand Prix of the Jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 1989), served the fictional Sicilian village of Giancaldo and was the place from which the young protagonist Totò left Sicily on the advice of the elderly projectionist Alfredo.

The Lascari-Gratteri station, which has been disused since Dec. 18 (the month in which the new Lascari train stop became operational), was demolished to make way for track doubling on the section between Fiumetorto and Castelbuono on the Palermo-Messina line. The mayor of Lascari, Giuseppe Labbate, told the Palermo edition of Repubblica that there was nothing he could do to prevent the building’s demolition, as the project had already been approved in 2003. “The regret remains,” said the first citizen, “of having lost a site that belongs to our historical heritage, which every year was visited by several groups of Japanese tourists looking for the sites of Tornatore’s films.”

Sources: Repubblica Palermo - Palermo Today

Photo: Left, the station in Nuovo Cinema Paradiso. Right, image of the demolition, from lascariweb.altervista.org

New Cinema Paradiso station demolished

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